


Belt

by ancientreader



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BDSM, Established Relationship, Impact Play, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 08:37:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7969846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancientreader/pseuds/ancientreader
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John has a new belt. Sherlock likes the sound of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Belt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TSylvestris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TSylvestris/gifts).



> Thanks to [Frikshun](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Frikshun/profile) for speedy and sharp-eyed betaing on no notice whatever!

Baker Street has seen an uneventful few days — too uneventful, in Sherlock’s opinion, what with John at the surgery and himself with no case in hand. He therefore calls in a favor from Audrey the clinic manager, who finds that John is owed an extra day off, which must for conveniently unspecified bureaucratic reasons be taken tomorrow, and then bides his time until late evening, when John is innocently undressing for bed. 

Sherlock takes the precaution of baiting his trap with the blue dressing gown, of course, and then:

“I wonder,” he remarks, as if the thought had crossed his mind but the answer is of only mild interest, “whether you’re aware, John, of the sound that new belt makes when pulled briskly through the loops of your trousers.”

John stills in the act of unbuckling it. “My belt.”

“Not ‘your belt’; specifically, your _new_ belt. Your manner of removing your belts is consistent, yet only this one produces the effect to which I am drawing your attention. I believe the leather must be exceptionally supple.”

“Is that right?” John’s tone neatly matches Sherlock’s oh-by-the-way, meaning that neither of them is taken in by the other’s nonchalance. Sherlock, who earlier had decanted himself onto the bed, now shifts position so that the dressing gown’s fabric shimmers over his groin. John’s hands remain on the belt buckle but his gaze rakes Sherlock, up and down; there being not a thing wrong with Dr. Watson’s vision, he spots, as he is meant to spot, the subtle irregularity in the waterfall of moiré where Sherlock’s prick has begun to push at it.

Sherlock shifts again, so that the dressing gown slips away from his legs; he parts his lips and arches his neck. 

John snorts at him. “Bit over the top, there.” 

“Effective, you mean,” Sherlock replies, watching John’s crotch with interest.

“You think?” John finishes opening the belt and undoes the top button of his trousers; but instead of undressing further, he reaches down and takes a grip of Sherlock’s hair. “Up,” he says, pulling in the specified direction; “now, head and shoulders on the bed, arms at your sides — yes, good.” 

Sherlock damns himself for a fool: he could have predicted this, had he troubled himself to think farther than _If John doesn’t give me a taste of that belt sometime soon I may lose my mind,_ because John, who in other circumstances is so straightforward, turns into a twisted genius the moment sex comes into the picture. Sherlock loathes humiliation and exposure — loathes them, loathes the way they skirt the edge of his willingness, and most particularly loathes the way that, in skirting the edge of his willingness, the combination of humiliation and exposure gets him hotter faster even than John’s hand on his prick. 

“Bastard,” Sherlock says, enunciating clearly.

“Oh, is that a complaint?” John lifts the hem of the dressing gown and lays it this way and that, letting it brush against Sherlock’s buttocks in soft shivery tickles. His fingers trail it; he pauses to deliver a few pinches to Sherlock’s thighs. At last he lays the gown just so, to frame Sherlock’s arse. “Nope, didn’t think so. Comfy?”

Arms-under-head would be comfortable enough, but arms-at-sides is ungainly and forces Sherlock to balance on his upper chest. He turns his head sideways. He is laid out for inspection with no regard for his dignity. Heat pulses through his crotch. “No, this is not ‘comfy,’ as you well know.”

A soft, amused “Hm.” Then: “So. Tell me what I’m looking at.”

Sherlock’s throat closes for a moment. He swallows, collects himself, temporizes: “You — you will of course have noted that my face is flushed.”

“Too easy. Go on.”

 _For —._ “My arse. It’s — up in the air. Waiting. You’ve arranged me for display.” Sherlock suppresses the urge to shift his weight, and then the urge to press his hips downward. His prick is so hard he fancies he can feel the tip of it against his belly. With just a little friction he could —

John slaps the tops of Sherlock’s thighs, hard. “You want the belt? Pay attention.”

The skin of Sherlock’s buttocks feels cool and exposed, in contrast to the hot sting and itch of the places John struck. Sherlock draws in a breath. “I’m pale but for my upper thighs. They’re bright red, from your hand, but the color is fading quickly. You — you can see the shadow of my — ”

“Scrotum,” John puts in.

Sherlock hates the word “scrotum.” _Scrawny, scrofula, scrapie, scrotum._ The word is a hiss followed by an expectoration. Ugly to the point of being risible, therefore more degrading than “balls,” for example. “ — Scrotum,” he forces himself to say, which earns him a hand shoved between his legs, and a squeeze just shy of hurting. He parts his legs further — John will let that go, because it suits his purpose, which is to stroke along the seam from the front of Sherlock’s _balls,_ up the back, and then follow his perineum to his arsehole and rub the skin just there.

“Go on.”

“You can see — see that I’m clutching at the duvet, because it is difficult to keep still.”

“To obey me.”

 _Oh God._ Sherlock hates this, he absolutely bloody hates it. “To obey, yes. You can see that I struggle to obey you.” 

John continues to rub at that same spot. Sherlock feels every movement of his finger — feels it on the skin John is touching and also in his balls, in his prick, along the insides of his thighs. He is desperate to move toward the sensation, so that a noise escapes him, something like a grunt and a whine at once, that makes his face heat with humiliation. 

John says, “Oh,” softly, as if surprised — not by the noise Sherlock made, surely, but the next thing Sherlock feels is the brush of John’s mouth between his shoulder blades, and then a series of kisses, pressed harder now, describing a line down his back to the top of his arse, where the kiss lingers for a second, two, three, until it feels like benediction.

The benediction is not contradicted by that filthy, exploring, possessive touch between his legs. Sherlock fights the impulse to close them and then fights the impulse to spread them wider. “John.”

“You’re mouthwatering. Hold yourself open now, and keep talking.”

“No. _No_.”

A tiny pause, then: “Ah. You want this _now_. Yeah, okay, you know how red you’re going to be?” and there it is, the sound: the tongue of the belt slapping through the belt loops, the susurrus of the leather against unassuming chino. Sherlock bucks, not quite involuntarily: he means to provoke not only the belt but the belt laid down hard, and John will know it. 

“Get your hands out the way,” John says, and Sherlock barely has time to note the missing “of” and move his arms above his head before the low whistle in the air and the crack of the doubled belt and a white instant of silence in his body and then the pain so deep and dark and blazing, like a hot iron bar laid on his buttocks side to side, and John gives him no time to absorb it, not so much as a breath, but strikes him again, using the other arm this time, so actually time must have passed between blows but there is no time, Sherlock can’t catch his breath, and _again, again, again, again,_ till sweat has broken out over his back and neck. 

The seventh blow doesn’t come. And doesn’t come. In frustration, Sherlock brings his fists down on the duvet, producing an unsatisfying _thlump_. “ _Dammit_.” He wants to spit. 

A hand cups itself against Sherlock’s right arse cheek; John laughs, almost under his breath. “So stroppy.” Sherlock knows his expression exactly: a fond and predatory smile. The hand presses, pinches, slaps back and forth, too lightly to be anything but annoyance and tease. “Christ, you should feel this. Hot as the bloody Aga and you’ll have welts for a week. Sure you want more?”

“For God’s sake, get _on_ with it!”

Another short silence; and Sherlock feels the atmosphere change, all at once and completely. The half-joking, half-earnest struggle has been transubstantiated into — something else. John’s voice is soft: “Ask,” he says. Only that. 

The belt describes a slow path under the curve of Sherlock’s buttocks. 

“John ... ”

“I know. But ask.”

 _Damn him to hell._ “Please, John. Please strike me with the belt.”

“Why?” Not taunting, not teasing. Merely insisting. Sherlock shudders.

“Because I want it — ”

“Because ... ?” Again the belt: this time stroking back and forth over the hot red skin, almost too light to feel except that the nerves are so sensitized by the earlier blows.

Sherlock squeezes his eyes tight to force himself to speak.

There’s a long pause during which the belt doesn’t move — during which John doesn’t move, Sherlock can tell from the silence behind him. He musters himself: this is more difficult than anything else John asks of him, and in the moment before he complies Sherlock can never quite believe in the outcome. His breath comes narrow, but he makes himself speak:

“Because I want to belong to you. Because when it hurts I know you own me. Because it’s _your belt_ , John. _Please_.”

“Oh, _Sherlock_ ,” near a whisper; Sherlock’s ears ringing and his heart a-gallop; and then the explosion against his skin, searing, silencing, obliterating every doubt, each hiss and snap and bolt of fire the physical manifestation of belonging, sacrifice, trust, love. Each blow hurts more than the last; with each blow, the pain matters less. Constraint burns to ash. Sherlock is dimly aware of his cries echoed in John’s gasps, of John’s chanted yes, yes, yes; now pain is no longer pain but the rushing of air under outspread wings —

A dozen blows, two dozen ... At last John stops; Sherlock manages to make sense of the sound of a zipper coming down and reaches behind himself to pull his arse cheeks apart, hissing at the cold pain of the bruises under his heated skin. John shoves two fingers in, slicked but cursory, and then flips Sherlock over and folds him in half and fucks into him hard, clutching his arse, his nape; Sherlock wraps himself around John, tight, pressing John in and in; John grabs hold of Sherlock’s hair; speech has been stripped away from both of them, they are hardly separate minds anymore but one animal that by some grave error has been parted from itself and is now rejoined. The dressing gown has fallen away, spreading around Sherlock like water, the moiré catching the light, effervescent, with every motion of their drawn-together bodies. 

Sherlock clings to John’s biceps, John’s sweat slippery between them, armpit smell, prick smell, the must of sex-wet pubic hair, Sherlock even imagines he can smell the leather of the belt where John dropped it on the bed next to them; John’s belly, wet, Sherlock’s cock, wet, slide against each other; it’s almost, almost enough — John cries out and drives Sherlock onto himself, harder; sinks his teeth into the juncture of arm and pectoral, and that’s it, there, yes, Sherlock bares his neck to John’s frantic kisses and is lost, is won, is thrown outward everywhere in a blaze like a Tesla coil.

He subsides finally into himself again. John has pulled out and rolled partway off; he reaches between Sherlock’s legs and strokes idly at his arsehole, massaging come and lube into the tender skin. “Whose?” The “s” slurs, a little. 

Sherlock sniffs at him. “Yours. As if you didn’t know it.” He wiggles. “Stop. _Stop_.”

John slides two fingers in, making a point as he always likes to do, then takes his hand away with one last pat. “Mm. Nice to be told, though. ... ” And, suddenly sounding alert: “I hear I have the day off tomorrow. You have summat to do with that?” 

“Really, John.”

“Course you did. So you know what I’m going to do, on my surprise day off? I’m going to make you sit bare-arsed on a wooden chair is what. Put that belt to good use tying your hands behind your back. Want to see you start to get hard every time you shift your weight on that nice sore bum of yours. Make you touch yourself but not let you come. ... Doesn’t that sound lovely?”

Sherlock pretends not to smile. “For you, perhaps,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> An entertainment confected for the most estimable TSylvestris, to her prompt "cerise, ash, effervescent," which has mainly been honored in the breach, the Muse being approximately as pig-headed as Sherlock himself. A toast to you, my dear!


End file.
